


carry it within, carry on without

by motherherbivore (Airheart)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Secrets, Gen, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 15:49:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13274748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airheart/pseuds/motherherbivore
Summary: A bad prank, a fight, a secret. Hela understands, better than anyone.





	carry it within, carry on without

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wnnbdarklord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wnnbdarklord/gifts).



> title borrowed from ["Roses" by The Staves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw4sPGYEW8Q) :)
> 
> a treat for you~ i got so excited that someone requested loki & hela that i finished this before signups were even done haha! i hope you like it ♥ 
> 
> and a thank you to [Meatball42](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42) for beta reading for me, you were lots of help!

It was cold that night, colder than it had been in over a hundred years, and Loki was sitting outside on the palace’s highest balcony, alone and blue. 

In the moonlight, his skin looked silvery-white, not as blue as it appeared in the warm light of the palace but still decidedly not Æsir. He brought his hands up to his face, tracing the raised markings in his cold skin. They felt like scars. He stopped touching them.

His neck prickled in the presence of the Odinforce and Frigga’s magic, even floors below as they were. The forces were always present in the palace, but they were stronger as the king and queen worked, cleaning up the mess that Loki had made.

His pranks were not new, or unexpected, but they had never caused such an argument. He would not remember the words later; something about Loki embarrassing the family, but it had escalated, fueled by Odin’s intoxication and Loki’s biting sarcasm, and Odin had raised his hand. Loki flinched, expecting a strike. But Odin just made a sharp gesture, and Loki’s complexion melted into frost-giant-blue, drawing gasps from the party guests and a blasphemous swear from Thor. 

Loki would have preferred to be struck.

He fled, before anyone could say anything more than a hushed “Loki—”, and climbed flight after flight of stairs until there were no more. There was no one in the observatory, not when there was a party in the main halls, and that was where he went. He sat outside, on the edge of the highest balcony, where one could see the whole of Asgard and into the mountains too if they looked well enough. Far, far below, several guards were hurrying around the palace grounds, looking for him. He heard Thor calling his name. He did not answer.

Soon, though, it was quiet again. Frigga had called everyone back inside, and the grounds were rich with her magic and Odin’s as they spun a powerful spell, no doubt to cover up the family’s secrets again. It was a unsavory, mind-altering enchantment that had not been used in centuries, but Loki did not imagine they would let the news of his true heritage spread. Later, he would wonder what else they had hidden from Asgardian memory. For now, he sat, and tried to clear his mind of the thousand thoughts running through it.

It was not long before footsteps approached, and he smelled a dark, earthy perfume. He did not bother to look up.

“Enchanting the mead, Loki? Really?” 

“I thought it would be funny,” Loki said faintly. It was a simple trick, a little spell to increase the potency of the drink. He had done it before at Thor’s parties, and laughed at the warriors’ drunken idiocy. It should have been even more amusing at a palace banquet, where everyone was carefully concerned with appearing charming and elegant. He remembered the anger in Odin’s face, though, and passed a hand over his eyes, as though he could wipe the image away. 

Hela sat down beside him, the warmth from the palace still hanging onto her cloak. 

“Odin is not funny when he’s drunk,” she said. “He is annoying. Much more like Thor, like he used to be. Oh, but I could tell you  _ stories,  _ little brother, about—”

“I’m not your brother,” said Loki. Hela frowned. 

“So you think I climbed a hundred flights of stairs, to sit here in the freezing cold, with a stranger?” 

“I—”

“I’ll just go back inside, then,” said Hela, “since I apparently have only one brother, and that’s where he is.” She looked at Loki, waiting for his answer, and he stared back at her for a fleeting moment before he turned away again, head low. 

“You see me,” he said. “I am not a son of Asgard.”

“Nor is Hogun,” Hela replied, “and yet he is always here.”

Loki shook his head, “That’s different.”

“Really? How so?”

“The Vanir are not…” The word  _ monsters  _ faded from his mouth, and he shook his head again. “I do not belong here.”

“Then where will you go?” Hela asked sharply. “Back to Jotunheim? Do you think _ that  _ is your home?”

Loki did not answer that. He had never been able to argue with Hela, dark and clever Hela whose venom-green eyes saw through all of his little tricks and lies. While other Asgardians liked to speak in riddles and roundabout ways, she spoke like a knife, cutting through the nonsense of polite conversation and killing the half-truths and lies that came from others’ mouths. Loki had learned some of his best manipulation techniques from her, too, and so they never worked on her. He could not lie, and he could not deflect, so he was quiet.

But Hela saw through that, too, and said, “Speak, Loki.”

“Why?” he asked, more softly than he meant to. Hela raised an eyebrow, but Loki rushed on, “Why am I here? Asgard is not friendly with the frost giants. Why would they give Odin one of their own?”

“Because you were unwanted,” Hela replied. The way Loki looked at her then hurt even her black heart, but she did not rescind her words. “You were a runt, and your mother was so ashamed of birthing you that she died. That,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “or Laufey killed her for it.”

“ _ Laufey _ ?” Loki asked incredulously. “Surely he isn’t—”

“He is your father by blood,” Hela said. Loki buried his face in his hands, fingernails digging into his head. Hela looked away, out over the rooftops, towards the edge of their world. She would not sugarcoat his story. She would not be another one to lie to him.

At length, Loki drew his hands away from his face long enough to whisper, “Why?”

“Odin intended for you to be a peacekeeper between our realm and theirs,” said Hela. “It was a foolish idea in the first place, but he continued to make it worse with all of his mistakes. He wouldn’t listen to me. I said that we should not hide your jotunn blood, but embrace it. Let the nine realms see that the great Odin Allfather—” she sneered the words— “was good and kind, loving enough to raise a frost giant that was rejected by even his own parents. But he refused. And look where we are now. Frigga is angry, Thor is confused, you are lost, and I…” She sighed. “I must pick up the pieces of Odin’s mess again.”

Loki was silent, his eyebrows drawn together as he stared through his fingers at the palace grounds below.

“You knew?” he asked, “all this time?”

“Yes,” said Hela. “We were all forbidden to speak of it. Odin put a spell on our mouths and hands so that we could never tell you, or anyone else. Old fool.” She glowered at the spire of Heimdall’s Observatory, far off in the distance. “His secrets fester like sores, and the infection spreads to all of us, but he ignores it.”

Then she sat up straighter, and turned to frown at Loki.

“I knew,” she said. “Odin handed you to me as we left Jotunheim that day, and you came home wrapped in my cloak.  Of course I knew, but have I ever treated you as less than a brother?”

Loki was silent. Hela pinched his arm.

“ _ Have  _ I, Loki?”

“No,” Loki said, quietly. There was a pause, then he continued, “There are times when you are the only one who didn’t make me feel odd and out of place here.”

“And yet you still doubt me, don’t you? You sit there and think that you are just another stolen relic for the vault, another one of Odin’s trophies.” She scoffed. “How selfish of you. Are you so self-absorbed that you cannot see the love you have? You are Frigga’s favorite, and Thor’s best friend. You even have my favor, and still you question it.”

Loki had no answer for her. He lowered his hands and stared at them where they rested in his lap. The moonlight illuminated the raised patterns on his knuckles, echoing the lines on his face. Hela was right, he knew—she always was. 

“I thought you were beautiful,” Hela said, her voice oddly soft now. “I pictured you in white and gold, like Mother. I wish Odin had let you grow up in that blue skin. Maybe it would have kept you from stealing my colors,” she added, plucking at Loki’s emerald-green cape. That got a little smile out of him. It faded quickly, though, and he was back to looking melancholy again. 

“But Odin?” he asked. “Did he ever truly love me?” 

_ Always chasing that old man,  _ Hela thought,  _ always looking for his favor.  _

“Odin is a coward,” she said, “and an old fool with a soft heart. He fears what is different, and what is powerful. You are both.” She paused, trying to keep the bitterness from her tone as she spoke next. “But, yes, he loves you. Perhaps more than he had meant to. You  _ are _ a charming little beast.”

Loki smiled again, just a bit. He loved Odin and longed for his approval, Hela knew, but so had she, once. 

They sat in silence then, a pair of shadows on the highest balcony, each lost in their own thoughts. Below them, a few of the party guests were leaving, some bakers and weaponsmiths who were loathe to go home so early but had work to do in the morning. None of them noticed the venom-green eyes watching them go. 

Then Loki sat up tall and took a deep breath.

“I suppose that I should go speak with Mother and… Father,” he said. 

“You should,” Hela agreed. “Let them hide your skin again and forget about tonight’s transgressions. They will fix our guests’ memories and pretend that it never happened, I’m sure.” She reached out and placed her hand over his, her rings glinting in the moonlight. “But know, little one, that you are special. Not because I told you so, like Odin tells Thor, but because you were born that way.” 

Loki looked at her for a long moment, with love rather than the loneliness she had seen in his eyes when she joined him out here in the cold, then nodded and stood without another word.

She let him go, and sat for a while longer on the balcony, staring out at their golden city. Jealousy bubbled in her heart, making her neck and shoulders ache, but it was not as black and sharp as it had once been. Now Loki would understand what it was like to be one of Odin’s secrets, one of his tools. The difference was that he had not yet served his purpose. One day, Hela guessed, he would be stripped of his powers, too, and his story cleansed of anything that Odin found to be unbecoming of the royal family. It would take a heavy toll on Loki, just as it had hurt Hela, the proud things they were. 

But he would not be alone. They were the same, Loki and Hela, the black dogs of Asgard, the ones with no right to the throne. When the day came that Odin took away Loki’s very core, Hela would be there to help her little giant fill the void and protect him while he licked his wounds. 

Or, she thought, a thin smile twisting her lips, perhaps Odin would finally die before that day arrived.

Hela stood, drawing her cloak tight around her shoulders. 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said to herself, and to the velvet night sky. The stars twinkled silently, and she sneered at her father’s father and all the fathers before him, then turned with a  _ swish  _ of her cloak and went back inside.


End file.
